Tag: John Lennon

Liverpool Venues 28 to 30

I am starting this week with a recent addition within the Mathew Street Cavern Quarter, namely Liverpool Temple Tavern. The hostelry initially opened its doors in June 2025 taking over the old Reiss store that was located there previously. They are owned by local independent Pub Invest Group who also hold the reins on forty other sites in the city including the nearby Erics and Rubber Soul.

It is split over two floors with grand interiors and comes complete with outdoor tables for those ‘summer nights’. Music is featured at various points during the week under the banner of Trad sessions and on my one foray I saw a local artist called Steve performing.

Temple Tavern. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

I now return to the Sounds of the City Festival I attended in May 2025 where our next port of call was the Jacaranda on Slater Street (known locally as the Jac). It was opened in 1958 by a forward thinking geezer called Allan Williams who leased an old watch repair shop and then transformed it into a coffee bar. It provided a stage for fledgling local bands and was a key player in the rise of Merseybeat in the 1960’s.

Four young scamps named John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe, George Harrison and Paul McCartney were regular visitors and were called The Silver Beetles. The first two named paid for some rehearsal space by painting murals in the cellar, which unsurprisingly remain to this day.

The venue also hosted the first ever Beatles performance in August 1960 where they played as a five-piece for 2.5 hours with the addition of Pete Best. They had to improvise microphone stands by utilising broom handles held aloft by fans. Their reward was to be paid with beans on toast and Coca-Cola, and they proceeded to deputise for the regular house band the Royal Caribbean Steel Band every Monday night.  

Jacaranda Beatles wall. Image Credit beatlesstory.com

The afore mentioned owner of the establishment secured their first tour to Hamburg also in 1960, where they actually set off from outside the Jacaranda in Mr Wiliiam’s green Austin van. He also introduced them to Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) who was a club regular and at that stage a drummer for Rory Storm & The Hurricanes.

Cynthia Lennon cites that John completed the lyrics to ‘One After 909’ song in the venue, the song then later reappeared on the Let It Be album. Allan Williams was invited to those album recording sessions, and in the footage, John is heard to say ‘Where do you think you are? The Jacaranda?’ They parted ways after that with Brian Epstein taking over the management reins, and the rest as they say is history.    

Fast forward then to the mid-1990’s and the place was literally on its knees and in a derelict state. The new owner Graham Stanley restored it but in the upgrades was considerate of its history.

In 2018 he also launched two related record shops, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the original opening. One was based within the original building and the other Jacaranda Baltic located nearer to the waterfront. In one of the branches, he managed to purloin a 1948 voice-o-graph booth, only one of four working versions that exist in the world. Many album launches have taken place there including Foals, Stereophonics, Wunderhorse and The Pretenders.  In 2024 a blue plaque was installed based on its Beatles connection.  

Upon entry you find yourself in the homely Jacaranda Ground Floor Bar where we saw a local singer called Freddie performing. At the top end of the large room there are steps that take you down to the main venue of Liverpool Jacaranda. It has a 400 capacity, and they have live music every night and like Cinderella morphs in another mode at the midnight hour at the weekends, with free live shows, namely Indie Rock Circus on Fridays and Rock N Roll Circus on Saturdays. The festivities are completed with open mic events on the Sunday.

The Jacaranda. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

However, this is where I discovered one of the key challenges of this festival, even during an early afternoon slot, which was the fact that the small cellar venues were liable to fill out very quickly.

So, I had a new novel position of watching from halfway down the stairs and peering through with my nose against the glass and a muted sound travelling through the pane. But as I would arbitrate in my one man ‘gig VAR’ meetings, they all count! What I could see but only partially hear was some energetic folk sounds from Sair, who I can only obtain sketchy details about, but I think derive from Leeds.

Gigs from Abroad Part 12 – Majorca

My first ever holiday abroad was in 1986 at the age of 18 to the Palma Nova resort in Majorca. My old pal Rick Clegg had managed to craftily purloin us the holiday through some chicanery from his employers at the time, a short-lived travel agent company called Jet Wing. The firm was based in Winckley Square, just round the corner from the Winckleys public house in Preston.  

Site of the old Winckleys Public House. Image Credit mawconsulting.co.uk

We were booked on night flights, and I recall us watching the latest episode of Minder before the parental lift to the Aeroporto. On arrival at the apartment complex, we discovered there was no room allocated to us, but they finally found us some digs right next to reception, though it looked like we had taken the room off other previous residents, as there were several feral cats residing outside the patio doors giving us the evil eye!

Whilst there we had many games of pool and Galaxians via 25 peseta coins and lashings of dirty beer. On the Saturday we had to utilise the services of World Service in a bar to retrieve the PNE result. Somewhat predictably, we nearly ran out of money on the last day as the final traveller’s cheque drained away!   

Galaxians. Image Credit blogspot.com

The returning flight was unfortunately redirected to Luton resulting in a 3-hour coach ride back to Manchester. I crawled into bed about 8am before being rudely awakened by a phone call from Rick about 3pm, who had reawakened his Boddingtons Bitter dependency that very lunchtime!  

Majorca is the largest island of the Balearic Islands and is a huge tourist destination with around 28 million passengers passing through Palma De Mallorca airport every year. It has the odd fleshpot locations, but there are many beautiful spots on the island. One of my sporting heroes, the tennis player Rafa Nadal was born and raised and still lives there in Manacor. Other previous and current musical residents include Eakthay Ahn, composer of the Korean national anthem, John Lennon’s ex-wife Cynthia, dance producer DJ Sammy and Sheila Ferguson from the Three Degrees.    

Sheila Ferguson. Image Credit Broadway World.

In subsequent years we have stayed in the resorts of Santa Ponsa and Cala D’or. In 2013 we headed to the most northerly resort of Alcudia. This sits close to Puerto Pollensa and the very picturesque old town of Pollensa old town.

In the resort there was a comfy friendly bar with sofas called Alcudia Bar Du 1. The first time I ever visited the owner who I had never met gave me a bear hug, which was slightly disconcerting, but he was full of joie de vivre!  They had a large open-air stage and we saw a decent set there from a band called Soulsearchers.  Further down the promenade there was another stage at Alcudia Harbour where we saw an act called Tres Quatro.

Throughout the fortnight I was tracking Andy Murray’s progress at Wimbledon before we headed home a couple of days before he secured his maiden title. We had glorious weather whilst we were away, and I recall we brought it home with us as Britain had a sustained heatwave for the next few weeks. 

We were able to fly in and out of our small local airport at Blackpool which had the added benefit of instantly accessing the car park outside the building and a very short 30-minute commute home. Unfortunately, it was a last trip out of Blackpool as the airport shut permanently a couple of years later.